A FIELD DAY FOR POLITICS, SUSSEX FARM & HOME STYLE

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

Where the "Bill Lee for Governor" sign was spotted
next to the "Feed Truck Entrance," it was clearly the
place to stop for the University of Delaware's annual
Farm & Home Field Day, an annual Sussex County gathering
where farming and politics mix.

It is the place where state Treasurer Jack A. Markell,
Brown University, University of Chicago, leaves his
corporate pinstripes behind to pet a not-yet-corpulent
pig, as it lay cradled in the arms of John E. McGee III,
a 15-year-old Laurel farmboy so proud of his pigs that
he wears a huge silver belt buckle with one on it.

It is the place where the University of Delaware
proves that its roots are as much in crops as in
chemistry and where everybody lines up to have chicken
-- is there anything else? -- for lunch.

It is the place where the politicians come for their
own particular brand of cultivation -- planting kisses,
harvesting votes -- among the 600 or so people who
mingled Wednesday under the trees at the university's
Research and Education Center outside Georgetown.

"It's one of the great Delaware traditions when you
really think about it," said Lt. Gov. John C. Carney Jr.
"It's a way we bring people together, like the old days,
particularly in the agricultural areas. Also, it's such
a wonderful grove."

Farm & Home Field Day always comes shortly after the
Delaware State Fair in Harrington, so it feels like a
coda to those gaudier festivities, like a time for
letting down with the family and close friends after the
guests have gone.

This is agriculture talking to itself, so the
campaigning fits in at a low murmur.

There is less of a press of politicians. Only the
governor's race had both of its major candidates present
-- Ruth Ann Minner, the Democratic governor who got to
speak, and William Swain Lee, the Republican challenger
who made himself known by shaking hands along the lunch
line.

U.S. Rep. Michael N. Castle, a Republican looking for
a record seventh term, and Carney, a Democrat running
for his second, attended. So did a couple of statewide
officeholders not on the ballot this year -- Markell,
the Democratic treasurer, and M. Jane Brady, the
Republican attorney general. Legislators, Sussex County
officials and a host of other candidates also were
there.

Old-timers remarked the crowd seemed smaller,
probably a casualty of these rush-rush times, when even
farmers have too much to do to give up half a day to
leisure.

Farm & Home Field Day had an extra political flourish
to it this year. University President David P. Roselle
announced plans to upgrade the Georgetown site by
building the "Carvel Education Center," a $7.6 million
project that will provide more community meeting room,
offices and laboratory space.

The donation that led to it was a gift of $2 million
from Gov. Elbert N. Carvel, now 94, a Laurel Democrat
who was elected to split terms in 1948 and 1960. Carvel
was there, accepting thanks for his contribution to the
center, for which the rest of the financing is expected
to come from the state.

"Gov. Carvel has a whole lifetime of figuratively and
literally making gifts to the people of Delaware,"
Roselle said.

Still an oak of a man at six-foot-six, Carvel was not
up to giving a speech, or even to walking unassisted,
but the wave and the smile and the delight in the crowd
were as strong as ever.

After the presentation, Carvel posed for what
probably was the greatest grouping of Delaware
lieutenant governors ever assembled for a photo, as he
sat in a chair surrounded by Castle, Minner and Carney.

Carvel was elected lieutenant governor in 1944,
Castle in 1980, Minner in 1992 and 1996, and Carney in
2000.

Someday that photo may become known as lieutenant
governors who made it to governor, but it is up to
Carney to elevate it. The others have done their part.